A Rising Tide Sinks All Coasts
Sea Level Rises Could Create Tens of Millions of Climate Refugees
SOURCE: Susmita Dasgupta, et al.
A flood of recent reports indicate that as a result of global warming, oceans levels are creeping upward far faster than originally predicted. Above: the project impact of flooding in the Nile delta region of Egypt, from "The impact of sea level rise on developing
countries," Susmita Dasgupta, et al., Climatic Change (Oct)(2008).
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A torrent of new reports and scientific studies released over the last two months have made the same disconcerting prediction: sea level rise is accelerating and could overtake many areas within the century. Experts already understood that many countries in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific were already vulnerable to sea level rises, but the new findings have dramatically raised the stakes for others once thought to be relatively safe—including several parts of the United States. If these predictions hold true, nations around the world could soon face the prospect of having millions of climate refugees on their hands.
Most experts now agree that the estimates made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, which predicted that a sea level rise between 7 inches and 2 feet by 2100, were much too conservative because they did not take the contributions from rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets into account. Ocean thermal expansion, which occurs when oceans grow in volume when they absorb more heat, was once considered the driving factor behind sea level rise. But new melt rate data collected from Greenland and Antarctica in recent years now suggests that deglaciation is a more significant factor. A landmark study published in 2005 made the threat starkly clear, as it found that the complete melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets could raise sea levels by about 70 meters.
By some estimates, a 3-foot rise could still be too optimistic.
Here in the United States, a joint report co-authored by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Geological Survey, and the Department of Transportation unveiled this past week concluded that Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas were the most susceptible states. The report, entitled “Coastal Sensitivity to Sea Level Rise: A Focus on the Mid-Atlantic Region,” warned that coastal erosion will quicken as sea levels rise, causing the sandy shores that make up the region’s coast to slowly crumble and put millions at risk. Because some parts of its coast are already sinking, North Carolina would be especially hard-hit. Under the report’s worst-case scenario, sea levels could rise by as much as 3 feet by century’s end, which would result in some of the Mid-Atlantic’s barrier islands “crossing a threshold” and collapsing.
By some estimates, a 3-foot rise could still be too optimistic. According to a study published earlier this month in the journal Climate Dynamics, sea levels could rise between 0.9 and 1.3 meters by 2100—or roughly three times higher than what the IPCC forecasts. To predict what would happen in the future, the authors, an international team of researchers from Denmark, England, and Finland, looked to the past—specifically at the connection between average global temperatures and the sea level two millennia ago. They discovered a direct relationship between the two: warm episodes were often marked by periods of sea level rise, while cool periods, like the “little ice age” that took place during the 18th century, were marked by periods of sea level decline.
If this relationship still applies today, and global temperatures rise by about 3 degrees by century’s end (if not more), as is widely expected, the authors conclude that the seas could rise over a meter, which would have disastrous consequences for many parts of the world. For this to happen, ice sheets and glaciers would have to melt at a much faster rate than most scientists have been forecasting—something that many, in the face of gloomy 2007 and 2008 melt rate measurements, now believe could be the new normal. Indeed, according to Wilfried Haeberli, the director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service, glaciers are melting so fast that most could be gone by the middle of the century.
While the United States and other developed countries will eventually be forced to adapt to the impacts of rising sea levels, poor nations, which largely lack the resources to do so, will be in for a world of hurt if present trends continue. A World Bank report published last year in the journal Climatic Change determined that tens of millions of people in 84 coastal developing countries will likely be displaced by rising sea level over this century alone. As Science Progress noted last week, the country that could suffer the most devastating losses is Vietnam.
According to the report, a one-meter sea level rise could displace over a tenth of the country’s population—roughly 8.6 million people—which lives in low-lying areas and along the coast. Mauritania, Guyana, Jamaica, and the Bahamas—the latter of which could lose over a tenth of its land to sea level rise—would be some of the other hardest-hit countries. Overall, a one-meter rise would affect about 56 million people spread over 194,000 square kilometers. An earlier report commissioned by the IPCC identified the South Pacific, including the island nations of Kiribati and Tuvalu, as ground zero for sea level rise; the 7 million Pacific Islanders, most of whom live within 1.5 kilometers of the shore, could join the growing numbers of early climate refugees.
To help these countries avoid the worst, the developed world should begin to disburse aid according to the degree of threat, the authors conclude, and help their governments develop national adaptation plans. Which is easier said than done, of course. Even most developed countries are struggling to come up with strategies to forestall future losses caused by erosion, agricultural degradation, and coastal flooding. According to the U.S. Climate Science Program report, most current mitigation policies—rebuilding at the same location, relocating, coastal engineering, or some combination thereof—would fail to hold back the faster sea level rises that are now widely predicted. Existing structures are designed for current sea level and do not take into account the effects of coastal erosion. Better land-use planning, retrofitting, and science-based management are all necessary to prevent the worst from happening.
Jeremy Jacquot is a graduate student in marine environmental biology at the University of Southern California and is a contributing writer for The Huffington Post, Discover Magazine, DeSmogBlog, and TreeHugger.
Comments on this article
World governments commit about half a trillion dollars per year subsidizing so-called fuels: natural gas, petroleum, coal and uranium. Now we have the prospect of world economic recession and a coming crisis that will impact millions of people and trillions of dollars of coastline development. As we grapple with today’s economic meltdown we hope not to experience another atomic meltdown, but must face ice cap meltdown.
Should we not demand an end to the damaging and bankrupting government financial supports for what we should not be doing? Can we learn now the difference between a Material Resource and the Energy Resources of the sun’s abundant nuclear power? Economics are human-made, and the economics of “clean energy” are becoming undeniable. We should advocate for a full world policy shift to promote only clean energy solutions, as we grapple with the folly and coming damages from “fossil fuels” and forest destruction.
January 28th, 2009 at 4:44 pmClearly there are few to zero engineering solutions that can protect against the worst sea level rise scenarios. In the near and middle term, transferring the refugees to floating communities makes the most sense. These types of communities already exist in some of the vulnerable regions. This strategy would keep populations in their existing regions and prevent conflicts arising from massive migrations.
Commercial barges would be the early form of floating communities. The larger barges are several football fields in dimension. Their carrying capacity is so high that several feet of topsoil could be loaded on them for agriculture. Later solutions could be super massive ferro concrete floating structures to serve as new frontier lands for displaced populations.
January 28th, 2009 at 5:00 pmA Global Warming Denier
Gas emissions have much more to do with human health issues here in the United States than with Global Warming. Reading the reviews and bloggs, I am reminded of my youth and of the Dickey Damn Project. When I mentioned this to my grand-father, he told me, ‘that gasoline was cheap, they pump it out of the ground like water.’ I forget just what electrical company bought Central Maine Power, but such wonderful hallucinations as tidal electricity has to be economical feasible.
President Bush, before 9-11, wished to have the price of oil increased to the point of making nuclear energy and solar energy much more in demand. Again, as a boy, I asked about the steel showing itself just beneath the tar, and it was explained to me that trolley cars once went from here to there. When older, I spent years in Occupied Japan, the trains came by every 15 minutes, but I bought a Cushman scooter.
Before I make my ‘Ancient Bet’ I would like to remind you (the reader) that I am a medical biologist, and that I worked forty plus years as a laboratory monkey. In college we were required to take one or two ’humanities’ and just alike, the humanities major was required to take Botany and Zoology: Bless them. As a ‘Global Warming Denier I suggest that we little people on earth here, have no influence upon climate. The humanities major doesn’t fathom how the planet cleans itself (regulated by physics).
In my book ‘An Analog from Adam to Nero’ I conclude Chapter III, with climate change bringing an end to an organized society, the Age of the Patriarchs (c. 2000-1700 B.C.). All of this gives us to ponder, will such events happen again? And this is what occurred.
I offer for consideration that Abraham was given lands in 2465 B.C. (Aram, Canaan, and the Philistine Plain-part of Egypt) as a negotiation plan with Ush by the god-king of Mari. In Egypt, the lands of Palestine and Syria began to be called Retenu. His majesty made war on the desert people, and the entrusted mighty hunter of the campaign, ‘was sent five times to ravage the lands of Retenu’ (2350 B.C.).
After: The Generations of Seth were cast into chaos. A shift in the Gulf Stream spent Europe in ice and for 200 years The World of the Patriarchs were left barren and dry. The Euphrates was not visited by the Thunder god any longer and in Egypt the Nile never flooded. The Nile Delta dried up and vanished, and the temple priest recorded, ‘that the adults ate their children.’ They do not mention that they, themselves, plundered the ancient tombs of the Pharaohs.
After 500 or 600 years in history we note that Hyksos struck Egypt and from 1720 B.C. until 1290 B.C. Lower Egypt was occupied by Greek Veekins and rulers of foreign lands.
January 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pmCould you believe that the ocean is not rising, but the land is sinking?
January 28th, 2009 at 7:17 pmOne may enter a fit of denial and refutation, but after the time of the great flood (2665 B.C.) and after building places of Cedar Wood, the most ancient described a Stone Age city just beneath the waters in the Mediterranean. Today that same site is 26 feet under water.
You should realize that the globe, that we live on, maintains a circle. That means that as the last Ice Age melted and the circle slowley changed. The land is simply returning to a circle and we humans observe the land sinking; where as, the earth is just returning to a natural state as we think of Venice sinking.
I want to ask you people some questions.
1. If for some reason it was of military advantage to raise global temperature one degree…how would we do it? And how long would it take?
2. I live in Tennessee. Is there not evidence that the whole state was once a tropical sea?
3. Did we not have an ice age that brought glaciers down below Pennsylvania?
Now here are some facts.
1. We cannot make it rain.
2. We cannot make it stop raining.
3. If a forest fire goes past critical stage we cannot put it out.
4. We cannot make the wind blow.
5. We cannot make the wind stop blowing.
6. We cannot alter the tides.
7. We cannot alter the jet streams.
8. We cannot affect the sun in any manner imaginable.
9. We cannot throughout our history put as much pollution in the atmosphere as one single volcano.
Now then given all the above and there could be pages and pages of similar questions and facts…
WHAT KIND OF BAD WEED WOULD CAUSE ANYBODY WITH THE BRAINS GOD GAVE A DUCK TO EVER CONCLUDE THAT WE COULD CHANGE THE CLIMATE BY SIMPLY LIVING OUR LIVES IN THE MANNER THAT WE DO?
The “man caused” global warming freaks have perpetrated this HOAX simply to make a buck. Can you say cap and trade? Have you noticed that not a microgram less fuel will be burned under cap and trade but dollars will change hands? If we burn dramatically less fuel our prosperity will erode. The laws of thermodynamics will determine how efficiently we can convert matter (fuel) into energy and that is the best we can do.
IF the climate changes (as it has more than once) it will take powers far beyond our driving of SUV’s and using weed eaters or air conditioners or outdoor lights or incandescent bulbs. Furthermore IF the climate changes it not occur in man’s timeline.
Get a cup of good coffee and get a grip.
January 28th, 2009 at 9:37 pmI’m really not buying into this as it looks more like erosion than a rise in levels. I’m not going to worry too much until downtown Seattle is under water.
January 30th, 2009 at 11:43 pm“1. If for some reason it was of military advantage to raise global temperature one degree…how would we do it? And how long would it take?”
This is a good and a bad question. It is bad because GW takes no prisoners. Six Billion will bake in an oven hotter than in Auschwitz, not Six Million.
It is a good question because it is so easy to implement. Start wildfires in California and Australia. Guess what?
We had 842 wildfires started by over 8,000 lightning strikes in a period of less than a week in California. In Australia the next poll will show they are 99% Global Warming Believers.
The hardest part to communicate to others is that each and every one of the CO2 molecules made in the last 150 years, excepts those that plants split into Oxygen and Carbon, is still in our atmosphere and ocenas.
Not even one molecule will be split, except by the forests that remain, and there are lot less forests in California and Australia.
It may be that 2008-2009 period will see the end in Net Reduction of CO2 due to vegetation.
Yes, the CO2 will continue to be split by vegetation but the CO2 and CO produced by natural and man-made fires in forests and rainforests will be greater than the CO2 broken up by the surviving, and shrinking, forests.
Add to this the initial data that found that Antarctic ocean waters reached, for the first time, the CO2 saturation level and you will no longer need reading glasses to read the writing on the wall.
A recent study concluded that we may be ignoring repercussions from GW and that we may not have as much time to get “our hose in order” before warming takes off in exponential rate.
February 27th, 2009 at 5:37 pmConsider this: We have not even agreed that ALL Carbon Emissions are bad. While Carbon Trading is a good start, the cost of putting CO2 in the atmosphere cannot be computed. What is the going price for baking 6 Billion?